Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Best Open Source Project For a Router/Wi-Fi Access Point?
An anonymous reader writes "My wireless router just died. I have an old netbook lying around that has a wired network interface and a wireless one. The wireless card is supported in master mode by Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD. What does Slashdot recommend I use to turn it into a router/wireless access point? DD-WRT? pfSense? Smoothwall? Fedora/Ubuntu/OpenBSD with a manual configuration? I'm not afraid of getting my hands dirty and I know what I'm doing, but I want as close to zero maintenance as possible."
If you want something powerful but maintenance free then DD-WRT on dedicated router hardware is the way to go. Running an ARM system-on-chip without active cooling and everything on flash memory is going to be far more reliable than any kind of PC set up. DD-WRT does pretty much anything you want and you can get a root shell if you want.
For what it's worth I prefer Buffalo hardware. It's robust and performs well.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That's a thing, right? Am I making that up?
pfSense is a great open source router distro and should have no problem running on your net book. However, Sophos UTM/Astaro Security Gateway is a commercial product that is free for personal use. I recommend it if you need any UTM features such as gateway AV, IPS/IDS, Spam Filtering, and centrally managed AV.
either, but there are also Zeroshell and ClearOS.
I'm not afraid of getting my hands dirty and I know what I'm doing, but I want as close to zero maintenance as possible."
DD-WRT. Pick a good router with a fast cpu in it if you plan on running P2P with it. My high-end Asus 'black knight' (one of the recommended high-end dd-wrt models) shits itself if you have more than about a 800 or so simultanious connections, because the CPU isn't fast enough. I would not recommend using a 'netbook' with a wifi card simply because it consumes a lot of power and you'll make up in lower power consumption costs what you'd spend on a purpose-built router in about 15-18 months.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
OpenWRT Attitude Adjustment 12.04; loads of packages available from official repositories, nice webinterface, and no commercial side selling product activation keys for certain features (like DD-WRT).
I recently got a Microtik router running RouterOS, and I have to say I love it functionality at it's price point. Even supports BGP if you are that way inclined. My DSL was annoying me, so I turned it to bridged mode, and now the new router does everything else. NAT seems faster, with pings being 3ms quicker which I was astonished at. My other idea was an old desktop running linux, but I worked out the pricing for hardware vs electricity. And within a year (in Ireland) I am going to save money with the Microtik router. The router uses about 7W fully loaded, whereas my desktop would be churning 250 watts fully loaded... This is my one: http://routerboard.com/RB2011UAS-2HnD-IN
My wireless router just died.
Well, can it be fixed? Maybe it's just a dead AC/DC transformer or blown cap.
Using an old laptop as a router isn't the most efficient use of your resources (time, money, energy, etc.). Sure, it can be done......but a router can be had for around $20 that is probably as good or better (I'm assuming your old laptop is at least 5 years old and probably G at best). Spending more would get you a better router (and if you shop around, even open-source compatible), but if the goal is to go on the cheap (assumed because you want to reuse a laptop), I'd still get a stand-alone router.
But if you insist on going that route, go with Linux and manual configuration. Then you can use the laptop for other things as well. Print server, web server, etc.
But in the end, giving the laptop to a group such as this: http://www.interconnection.org/ is better use of the technology.
It comes with their own DD-WRT firmware, but I personally prefer OpenWRT.
It's a bad idea to use a netbook from the perspective of power consumption. Compared to a dedicated system (often ARM or MIPS), a netbook's going to suck up a lot of power that could be better put to other uses. I'd personally suggest getting a commercially-available router that's well-supported by OpenWRT, such as a Netgear WNDR3800.
If you must use this netbook, then your best options are probably OpenBSD or Debian (stable), depending on hardware support and what you're comfortable with.
OpenWRT on cheapo commodity hardware - personally I'm using TL-WR1043ND, 4x1gigE/300mbps 2.4ghz N, USB storage is best bang for 50 bucks.
The system is reasonably specced to run openvpn gateway for home network and serve USB drive miniNAS via smb.
DD-WRT is basically GUI polish for people who don't wan't to delve into scary command line, but otherwise nowhere near as flexible as openwrt is.
OpenWRT is an alternative to DD-WRT
you probably won't get the same signal amplification as with a dedicated wireless router wireless signal amplifier, it can reflect on your wireless coverage.
I'm using an atom cpu with several onboard intel gig-e ports.
fanless and has been pretty reliable so far. my 50mbps cable connection stays up and the 'router' has not needed rebooting in the month or two that I've been using it so far.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
In my opinion: Unless you're planning on also running servers (web, FTP, mail, etc) on your new "router/access point", then it's complete overkill to use even a netbook for that. Additionally, you'd be potentially opening yourself up to a world of hurt since your netbook, being a general-purpose computing device at heart, is going to be more vulnerable to outside attack than a purpose-built router/gateway/wireless access point.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Keep in mind that while a dedicated consumer-grade wifi router draws around 5W, a netbook will draw 20-25W (possibly more).
Although that may not sound like much, a 24/7 load of 20W, at $0.15/KWH will cost you $2.16/month. You will break even vs just buying a low-end (Rosewill, etc) new router in about 10 months, or two years for a mid-consumer-grade LinkSys/DLink.
Admittedly, your solution will give you just about the highest-end wireless router you can get (limited by the radio in your netbook, of course), theoretically supporting any networking feature available with Linux. In practice though, how often do you really need anything beyond WPA2, IPv4 routing with a basic "block everything except what I allow" firewall, and perhaps (if you use VPN a lot) IPSec support?
I use a build of Tomato by Shibby on my Asus "Black Knight" RT-N66U . It has tons of features and is easy to setup. You could also try some of the other Tomato builds.
http://tomatousb.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato_(firmware)
Not Open Source.
I only buy hardware where OpenWRT can run. With USD 50.- you can buy a TP-Link box and get a great router later on.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Look at the CeroWRT project (http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt). They have a fork of OpenWRT that is kept up to date quite often, and includes a lot of fixes for bufferbloat issues. The firmware gives a very low latency experience with very little effort.
You could do worse than take a look at http://www.clearfoundation.com/ and the community edition of ClearOS.
In my opinion it provides Cisco-like capability on any old PC you have lying around. That old PC almost certainly has more power and capability than any typical end-user-grade router in the $30 to $120 market.
Disclaimer: I have no relationship with ClearFoundation except that of a user since 2003.
Twice as crazy as I would be if I was half as crazy as I am.
..you can start with Google!
I have tried what you suggest using both Ubuntu and Debian. I used one of the AR5212/AR5213 HP pci cards however if your laptop will work in the master mode you should be able to use it. I also have a Mikrotik router as someone else suggested. The hostapd solution is not as good as the Mikrotik even though I both are running high power. In my case it is probably the antenna placement. There are plenty of hostapd howto's on the net. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg Mode:Master Tx-Power=27 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:on
OP talks about FreeBSD and OpenBSD but not NetBSD, while it is as relevant as the other alternatives. Not better, nor worse, IMO: they are all capable.
How do you think he just found Slashdot? This site isn't one that you just accidentally type. ;^)
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
"but I want as close to zero maintenance as possible.""
That means just go buy a cheap appliance WiFi router for $30.
If nothing else, you'll spend more on electricity running whatever it is you were planning on doing with a netbook than the cost of the new router.
And really, off the shelf routers are pretty maintenance free. The 3 or 4 linksys and other brand routers I've got laying around have been essentially maintenance free for 3-5 years. When they fail, I throw them away.
On the other hand, if you want to use this as a learning experience, then, by all means delve into it. If you want a real challenge, do it in Win7 or Vista (or Win 8), and you can learn all about the intricacies of the "netsh" command.
I run pfSense in a VM under ESXi and it works flawlessly. I figured since I have a server on 24/7, there was no need to add the power overhead of another box. I'm pretty sure pfSense in a VM consumes less than the 5W that a consumer router might consume.
My money is on OpenBSD for projects like this. You get very compact base system that still has all the stuff you need in there for a project like this. And even my old PF tutorial has enough info to get you up and running.
But with the man pages and the OpenBSD FAQ you really have all the information you need at your fingertips.
-- That grumpy BSD guy - http://bsdly.blogspot.com/
And about 12 hours after installing Tomato I installed DD-WRT over it.
DD-WRT is pretty sweet. It just works, is easy to set up, with a very easy and comprehensive website, but it also has loads of, well documented, advanced features.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I would buy a router, for instance TP-Link TL-WR1043ND, and install openwrt on it. Why this combo?? Because the router is well supported by openwrt, not expensive and for little power consumption you get a wide-range of possibilities. You can do lots of stuff with it if you connect a usb http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/extroot, for instance: create a rsyncd server and connect to it through ssh (replacement for dropbox and the like), create a voip server, printer server, webserver, torrent downloader(rtorrent and rutorrent), rss reader (ttrss), distributed social networking, etc. I am only running an rsyncd server, rtorrent and a webserver and it is running ok. For simple things a pc server is overkill and expensive to run. http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start .
Many people say to get a router instead because of power consumption, wireless signal strength and stability.
You have to work out the power use yourself (some figures have already been posted by pla). Keep in mind though that a laptop using 20 W also provides 20 W of heating. If you're in a hot climate, you may lose twice by having to run the AC harder. If in a cold climate, with electric (resistive) heating, the 20 W may essentially be free most of the year. Also, if you can eliminate other devices (like a VPN gateway) with the laptop, that could be a win. On the other hand, if you need wired network it seems you can't even get away with an extra switch, as the laptop doesn't have enough ports -- here the dedicated ones clearly win.
The wireless signal can be tested. If you can boot a live-cd you could set up host AP mode and test speed by transferring data and latency with ping.
The stability is hard to gauge. Both netbooks and consumer routers can be quite bad. I ran a Dell Insiron 1501 as a router for a few years and didn't have any problems (except a ExpressCard NIC, which was later replaced).
I wouldnt' go for the laptop due to not having wired network, but otherwise I would definitely pick it. It's great for hosting small DIY services like a webcam. I wouldn't host internal-only services beyond those typically hosted on routers, for security reasons (e.g. if the webserver first binds to the local interface, then after an update binds to both interfaces).
So far the comments are advising that you replace your router with another stand-alone router that car run open firmware, and I agree. But the calculation is different if you want to run an always-available hard disk on your network. You see, consumer routers sometimes have a USB port, but the bandwidth of the USB connection is so atrocious that it's almost unusable. You'd be lucky if you had access to 1/10 of the theoretical USB2 bandwidth. This is where homebrew routers excel. Any normal-ish motherboard - even for Atom - has a proper USB2 and SATA interface, which will actually work close to its rated speed. You could probably even hardhack the SATA on your netbook to connect to a full-sized drive. If you screen is off, I don't think that your power usage will be much higher than a router's. Mine uses about 8W, pretty much 24/7. Most likely, it broadcasts a stronger signal that what your netbook can do, but remember that you can buy a USB2 network adapter if you need to improve the connection strength.
I have run an openbsd firewall for the last 2 years. For 18 months I did nothing to it, and never needed to. It was SO RELIABLE, I forgot what version was running and how it was set up. The last 6 months I have been rebuilding the network, and all the new stuff is running a either openbsd and freebsd, but the router and firewall is always openbsd.
Hands down the best choice for commodity hardware where you it it to 'just work' once its setup.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
there are several reasons why i outsource my wireless to a dedicated piece of off-the-shelf hardware that connects to a linux router. pci and USB cards have poor support and arent really suited for the task. for example:
open source ralink 802.11g chipsets in TPLink and other wireless cards have a sleep mode bug that causes the access point to disappear when using hostapd in the 3.10 kernel..its been a bug for quite a while. the AP cannot be recovered until the cards module is reloaded. in some cases, this cannot be recovered from until the machine is rebooted. the card isnt stable after suspend from ram either.
one more issue is Windows clients. if you have Vista users, they can usually connect to your pci/usb hostapd card. if you have windows 7/8 users the chances of them being able to connect and acquire a DHCP address is going to be spotty. they will randomly lose association as well. Ive never fully determined why some netlink USB adapters in windows 7 require multiple attempts to get on a hostapd network.
next up: antenna gain. the little antennas shipped with PCI cards in my experience are miserable. you'll want a dedicated 9db antenna of at least 6" in length, just like your linksys routers have. Even then checking the signal strength you'll notice a pretty decent lack of power. expect the problem to be worse with USB based solutions as voltage is pretty restricted. so is USB bandwidth:if you have more than 1-2 users on the wireless at a time, you can expect performance to be wretched.
This all having been said, I cant speak for newer wireless pci cards... id be curious to see how newer wireless N cards perform. are multiple SSID's supported? is there a chipset requirement that virtual SSID's be specially constructed to match virtual mac addresses in a specific means? for example again, Realtek and Broadcom chips do require, among firmware requirements in the latter, that virtual SSIDs are mapped to hexidecimally sequential MAC's and even then, Realtek will often times simply ignore other SSIDs its supposed to advertise.
My suggestion, and what as a network engineer ive used at home: linux router with a dedicated TPLink access point(s). I know, the point is wireless but here we really only want it for the excellent transciever(s) that maintain affinity with clients across a broad range of guest operating systems and provide uniform signal coverage in a predictable radiation pattern from the dipole antennas. you also open up the possibility of 48v PoE, so running access points looks cleaner if you're putting them across the house and in the yard. Finally, vlan capability and multiple SSID are affordable and quite functional should you need it.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I had dd-wrt running on my linksys e3200 sharing internet from the office to the main house. Not stable at all.
Later I swapped for a cheap TP-link router running gargoyle to extend my range. It has been really stable. So happy with it.
Super simple:
If you are using Windows, Windows: download and install the $13 Thinix WiFi Hotspot app at http://thinix.com/product.asp?p=A6A97DBA-E3F7-4906-BB9F-DFEDF12B8236. Launch it and click on the Configure tab. Set the name of your wireless hotspot in the SSID field. Add a password in the Wireless Key field and hit save. Hit the large Start Hotspot button at the top of the app’s window and get ready to share your internet connection.
NOTE: Thinx works on most versions of Windows 7 or Windows 8, but does not work on:
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7 Starter Edition
The same thing is even easier on Macintosh:
Launch System Preferences and click on Share. Select Internet Sharing from the list on the left. Set the “Share your connection from” ethernet or in the case of a MacBook Air, USB ethernet. Set the type of shared networking to wireless under “To computers using” by checking Wi-Fi. Click on the Wi-Fi Options button and a window will appear to set your network’s name and password. Once those are set, hit ok.
Now turn on Internet Sharing and you’ll be able to log into your newly created Wi-Fi network from all your tablets, smartphones, and media streamers.
I'm a fan of Cero-WRT: http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt Works well with Netgear routers (a couple of models) and my wireless links stay up for weeks on end.
I would highly recommend the WNDR3800 running OpenWRT 12.04. You will be very happy with it's coverage,performance etc.
A low end "net top" system running PfSense will be great for routing/VPN etc. You can also speak BGP/OSPF etc with it. You'll need beefy specs if you want to do IDS with it.
I also have a Cisco Layer 3 switch. My network looks like this
WAN01
|
|
|
CORESW01 (cisco 3750-pwr24)
|
|
|
AP01
|
|
Printer/wifi clients/Moca adapter for my TiVO boxes
I have a bunch of other development lab systems hung off the core switch. Everything is run as layer3 between the devices.
PFsense is really at a professional level since 2.0 was released. I've had it on a little box with a Zotac AMD mobo with a 2 port Intel NIC for a couple of years and it's really fantastic. The GUI gives you access to all the knobs you need and the concept of converting all unix config files to one giant XML bundle really works for an embedded router platform. I've got a pretty complex setup & I'm pretty sure I could install & restore the whole thing & its half-dozen packages to a new box in less than half an hour if I had to.
I've done this in the past. My routing computer's wifi has never been able to compare with a wifi router, but if you ignore the "wan" port and plug your linux box into one of the other ports, you can use the wifi router for wifi only (essid, etc) and your own router for how traffic flows to the internet and to your wired network. The best of both worlds.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
about this a year ago. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/because-everyone-still-needs-a-router.html
I followed the advice there and flashed an ASUS RT-N16 ($70 when I bought it. Maybe less now.) with easytomato firmware. The name says it all. I especially love the wireless print server. I believe easytomato works on the expensive dual band ASUS routers as well but haven't tried it personally.
I pay for 2 static IP addresses from my ISP, but using OpenBSD I can actually use 4. Here's how it works:
OpenBSD with pf makes a fantastic router/firewall. I'm sure the same thing can be done with other OS's, I just happen to find pf to be very good. OpenBSD's documentation is also great.
As far as 3rd party firmware for a consumer wireless router goes, I've been most satisfied with OpenWRT. It's actively developed, the package management makes installing add-ones a breeze, the custom firmware builder is great, and I find the UI to be really intuitive.
Mainly I've been using pfSense for the last 6 months or so, which I'm very happy with. For wireless I still run OpenWRT on a WRT54GL running as an AP only, so I can't really comment on pfSense wireless support. I'm running pfSense in a VM and it doesn't recognize the host wireless card as a wireless card through VirtualBox.
pfSense is more versatile than the embedded systems. It gets my vote. If the wireless support is lacking you can do what I did and through an "unmanaged" AP on the network.
I had a $20 router; you wanna know how reliable it was? I wish I could tell you; because it wasn't. While the wired switch portion wasn't an issue; the wifi-radio loved to overheat and crap out after any real data streaming. Netflix; Slingbox; Youtube; even a Windows Update would cause this $20 router to shut down. I wasn't even using any of the actual router functions (DHCP, Firewall, NAT, etc.); I was merely using it because my ISP supplied router is only capable of 20mhz Wireless-G; which doesn't even come close to my actual line-speed. So I had this old Dell laptop sitting around and a pile of parts. I'd been wanting to make a UPnP based media server with file-sharing capabilities; I figured I'd see if I could make it at least a wifi ap/bridge as well.
Turns out, to make it a wifi-AP; it wasn't that difficult. The main program you need is hostapd; which will allow you to put the wireless card in master mode. Since I didn't need anything but just a basic wifi access point; it was as simple as creating a network bridge between eth0 and wlan0; and writing a configuration file to make hostapd run the card in infrastructure mode with wireless-n and 40mhz channels. Adding the rest of the required software to get a full router setup didn't seem like much of a chore either; plenty of howtos and tutorials for a bunch of Linux distros will tell you how to do this.
The only real downside is a netbook probably doesn't have very good wifi antennas; not to mention the wifi card itself probably doesn't output as much as a full router. Not only will I not swear to that; but depending on the card, you can bump up the transmit power. I've been using my laptop to provide wifi and serve music over my network and it's worked great! I get close to 100mbps transfers without the constant shutting down of my cheap router.
I've used ClarkOS since its ClarkConnect days. It needs only the barest of system requirements and its dirt easy to set up. Boot off CD or USB and hit enter a few times. The latest versions include an appstore for many of the options, so you have a lot of control over what you install and enable - via a web GUI. Could I do this with any flavor of Linux and iptables? Yes. But this is stupid easy.
I was using openwrt and has somehow hacked into (week root passwd?), and I gave openbsd in the form of flashrd a shot. It was the best move I could have made. No security vulnerabilities since, and no reason to upgrade. Spend the time getting a nice packet filter configuration, and learn to love not having to search all over the web as you do in the linux world--it's all in a manpage or www.openbsd.org/faq.
I've since switched my laptop to openbsd, too, and have little maintenance but adequate security. Upgrades are easy, but you only have to worry about them for features, rather than features or security.
Best choice for this is vyatta.
Have a look at m0n0wall. It's based on FreeBSD and is configured using a PHP web GUI to configure the NICs and firewall.
Back in the day I used is as a wireless access point running on a Pentium 1 system with 48 MB RAM, booting off a 16MB compact flash card.
http://m0n0.ch/wall/
IPFire is by far the best solution right now. Functionality is top notch and the features blow anything like smooth wall & pfsense out of the water. ipfire.org is the site!
Use Mikrotik is very more useful that all that trashwireless router that all people here named...
www.mikrotik.com
No recommendations on vyatta? Why not have a proper router OS running? DD-WRT and others are pretty limited
If you just need your network to work again, you might just consider getting a $5-10 cable off amazon (I'm a sucker for free shipping) or monoprice. You end up with better security, more bandwidth, faster response time, no interference from pesky neighbors, and full duplex. If you have a bunch of computers in one area, you can run one cable to a switch that is by the computers. Of course, you'll still need the wireless eventually for the convenience and mobile devices, but you will probably prefer having a wired network for your desktop machines.
OpenWRT on AR716X hardware is the best in the tree right now.
I have WDR TP Link 4300 using the latest GIT.
Quite excellent, and using the latest 3.8 driver tree for Atheros Wireless and you get really good throughput.
I imagine when Kernel 3.12 comes online, it will be pretty fantastic.
The 4300 routers have been a mainstay at my house, pushing High Def video and Video gaming for about 6 computers and 4 tablets, 4 phones.
The detachable antennas allow reallly good reception improvements as the key to good wireless isn't a large signal, it is good antennas.
So right now I have 5 of the units and they are running MIPS processors in them, all over 600MHz so you can use them for doing storage area networking and decent iptables control at Gigbit speeds.
Highly recommended.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Running on an old Athlon X2 4200+/4GB/320GB, based on Redhat
Kinda overkill, but I'm running a caching server, bandwidth shaping, mail server with antispam, dual wan, VPN, along with other goodies. Beats *any* off the shelf router. Besides, it won't kill itself for unknown reasons in two years...
Not sure about all packages being 100% open source though...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearOS
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
I use hostapd running on Slackware on a FitPC2i. It has far more processing power than any ARM or MIPS based router, more RAM, dual GigE, and takes a 2TB 2.5" SATA HDD (it came with a 16GB SSD) so it doubles as a file server and darknet node. Also it's fanless and low power.
I guess I might use OpenBSD if I was going to do it again, other than that, I would do everything the same.
If I just needed a minimal and cheap access point or client access router, or had to deploy lots of routers, I would use many of the fine products Mikrotik make. They are easy to setup, with an IOS like (but more intuitive, type-completey, self-documenting) commandline interface, and have a good feature set, and extremely good performance for the price.
If I was building an datacenter Layer 3 fabric, I would evaluate the currently available Openflow compatible switches, and setup a few servers as Openflow directors.
Is https://turris.cz/en/.
"Project Turris is a service helping to protect its user's home network with the help of a special router. It is a not-for-profit research project of CZ.NIC, z. s. p. o., the registry of the Czech national top level domain .CZ."
You could consider using Voyage Linux [0].
It's a Debian derivative distro for embedded (x86) hardware (think PC Engines ALIX, Soekris boards, and more).
Voyage includes hostapd and boiler plate configs (for network interfaces, hostapd, etc).
There isn't a webui with Voyage, but is one necessary? It could be argued that once a DIY router is set up the configuration will not change.
And there's IPFire [1] which offers an embedded Linux system with a webui.
IPFire is for x86 hardware, but they have images for ARMv5 hardware.
If for whatever reason the OP looks at buying new hardware rather than re-purposing the netbook, it would be wise to stick with a hardware platform that has more than one OS option. Example: I have far more software/distro options running x86-based PC Engines ALIX hardware!
And my PC Engines hardware uses ~5W so it's on par with that of consumer grade routers (per my Kill-A-Watt tests) in terms of power consumption.
[0] http://linux.voyage.hk/features
[1] http://www.ipfire.org/features
Are there any routers out there that include Port Knocking, or can be configured to include it? ISPs don't want you to run any server. But you can do so undetected, with all ports closed, on an as-needed basis from the point of view of the larger net, by using Port Knocking.
Check out Mini Box.com for build it yourself solutions. It will cost a bit more initially, but you gain the ability to run any software you desire. I used DD-WRT for years but it doesn't seem to be well maintained anymore. Ditto OpenWRT. Interest in hacking consumer routers appears to have run it's course. Personally I run bind and isc-dhcp inside my network and I use a third party DNS provider instead of my ISP's questionable DNS service.
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
They're ridiculously cheap, very fast, feature rich and ultra stable, you can pick one up that will route about 300mbps for about $50 - with wifi, every port is routed - just brilliant devices.
I've discovered that the stackable Linksys stuff, like the WRT54G and BEFSR41, benefit greatly by adding something along the lines of a 486 heat sink fan.
You should be able to find a 12V DC tap off point near where the wall wart plugs in*, and plastic/nylon motherboard standoffs, with the mobo end stuck in the fan's screw holes, and the chassis end clipped off flush with the flange and a little RTV silicon caulking compound added to glue them to the circuit board, will suspend the fan over or near whichever chip gets hottest.
*This portion of the exercise will involve knowing by which end of a soldering iron not to pick it up, and the observance of polarity.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I have had great success with OpenWRT on a TP-Link wireless router (don't remember the exact model). I looked into DD WRT but that project has a history of GPL violations so OpenWRT it is.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Yeah, I said it. Screw DD. Its just a slower, lamer, version of OpenWRT.
I run untangle http://www.untangle.com on a notebook with a buscard 10/100 for uplink and 100/1000 for downlink into a gigibit switch.
The only reason I wanted this is network-wide ad blocking.
It does everything I need it to do.
Steve
We use openwrt as a base OS. It works pretty well. It has a lot of packages and many single board computer vendors support it. It is pretty hackable and has lots of embedded patches that would never make it into mainline linux but you really need on embedded platforms.
-- soldack